This cartoon is right about how the wingnuts operate.
I can see how this strategy can boost fundraising and fire up the base. But it is not clear to me that it is an effective strategy to get votes, apart from the really hard core base. Of course, the primary races tend to be determined by the party faithful so it might help in winning the party nomination. But what about general elections in anything other than in constituencies where people will vote for their party candidate irrespective of whether they actually approve of this kind of behavior or not.
I am not aware of any study that looked into whether ‘triggering the libs’ is an effective strategy in persuading anyone other than hard-core supporters.
Seth Meyers had a funny segment about this.